Oscar buzz hovering over TIFF

Yearning for first Oscar love at the Toronto International Film Festival is a tradition.

Brad Pitt's Moneyball and George Clooney's The Descendants began their journeys to the Academy Awards at last year's festival.

So did The King's Speech and The Hurt Locker before that. Juno, No Country for Old Men, Slumdog Millionaire, Michael Clayton, Atonement and Eastern Promises, and many more, got their Oscar mojo working at the Toronto festival.

At the 2012 edition, Ben Affleck's Argo is attracting the most awards talk as the film builds toward the Academy Awards next year.

The film's uncanny mix of thrills and laughs in the profiling of a real-life escape escapade during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis has won lots of praise. In fact, the film seems bound to get a best picture nod, a nomination for Affleck's solid directing and another nomination for Chris Terrio's script.

Alan Arkin, who plays a sarcastic old-school movie producer in Argo, will most assuredly pick up a supporting actor nod, as well.

During an interview, Affleck said Oscar attention would be nice, but he was more interested in getting the movie released with a sound sendoff when it arrives in theatres Oct. 12.

In other film festival Oscar-wannabe news, both Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman are getting lots of attention for their roles in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master. Phoenix plays a dysfunctional Second World War veteran trying to cope, while Hoffman portrays a charismatic 1950s self-help guru exploiting the weakness around him. Both are likely candidates.

Keira Knightley is getting raves for her Anna Karenina, and possibly headed to Oscar night with her director, Joe Wright (who collaborated on Atonement with her). The film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's classic love story might be a tougher sell.

John Hawkes won't be. He came to prominence with his Oscar-honoured role in Winter's Bone, and does it again with The Sessions at this year's festival. In the film, he plays a man stricken with polio and surviving in an iron lung. To lose his virginity, he hires a sex surrogate (Helen Hunt), and complications ensue. A second Oscar nod for Hawkes is a sure thing.

In the maybe-and-might department, consider these two winning types. Marion Cotillard's portrayal of a whale trainer in the romantic drama Rust & Bone is up to her high standards. Jim Broadbent gets to exercise his acting instrument with multiple personality definitions in Cloud Atlas. Both are close to getting nods, depending on the whims of the season.

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